To Beat Heroin Addiction, A Turn To Coaches

“Recommendations out this week from a task force on opiate abuse include more peer support and home-based counseling. Health insurers and state Medicaid leaders say they will look at funding for recovery coaches, but there is no plan to do so right now.

Across the country, there’s growing interest in using recovery coaches to help heroin users stop, says Robert Lubran, director of the division of pharmacologic therapies at the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. At least one state, New York, is paying for coaches to help treat addiction through its Medicaid program.

“This is an evolving field,” Lubran says. “[We are] learning more and more about the best ways to treat addiction and certainly the use of peer counselors, or peer coaches, has become more and more widespread.”